Unmasking the wolf in sheep's clothing: Soviet and American campaigns against the enemy's journalists, 1946–1953

Abstract

This article uses a comparative perspective to examine Soviet campaigns against American correspondents in Moscow, and American crusades against the representatives of the Soviet news agency TASS. Building on Russian and US archival materials, it shows that the practice of targeting the enemy's foreign correspondents transcended the Cold War divide. Yet, different ideological injunctions informed the dynamics of each campaign and the mechanisms available to the participants. The respective campaigns turned journalists into the symbols of socialist and liberal political systems. As a result, the rhetoric of rights, duties, and freedom of the press in the USSR and in the US became entangled in the ideological rivalry of the two superpowers.